Yong Xi wrote:As I have said before, think of Ray A. as a modern day Martin Harris. Better yet, Ray A. is a modern day Martin Harris who is always running out of lithium.
Not quite accurate. I never joined any other religion apart from Mormonism. Never even considered it for one moment. It is true I have "gone back and forth" within the Church. The reason for that is not difficult to understand. I had great difficulty believing in "the Church", and found the time demands and other "bureaucratic" observances, for want of a better description, more like "the traditions of men". I have long distinguished between the Church and the gospel, as noted in 3 Nephi 27. I also believe many "leave the Church" while still believing in some fumdamentals. In my case it was the Book of Mormon. So the expression "I left the Church" is quite accurate for me, but I still believe in many of the fundamentals, which include large portions of scripture (not all of it, for example I don't believe the earth was created in six days, or six thousand years, yet this is further qualified in the POGP with the term "time periods", so even LDS scripture is very diversified). I also believe Joseph Smith was a genuine prophet but one who was, himself, "subject to the weakness of men", and made mistakes. I still can't get my head around D&C 132, yet I find most parts of the D&C to be inspired.
This is where people like you fail to distinguish. Like Harris, my belief in the Book of Mormon remained, but I never went to another church, nor believed in any other "prophets".
When I went on RFM I was anti-Church, but not anti-Gospel, nor anti-Book of Mormon. Silly, silly me, to think that RFMers would understand this distinction. Thus began my five year animus with exmos. They want
me to understand them, yet would they take the time to try to understand me? No way. And Steve Benson was initially the one who insulted me when he came on RFM to do the dirty on his family. I called him on it, but the Benson acolytes would have none of it, nor would the mods, who eradicated every single post I did. I was not even, in my exchanges with Benson, "advocating faith", I was defending myself.